It is being widely reported that President Biden told President Zelenskyy during the latter’s visit to the White House on Sept. 21 that the U.S. will send a limited number of ATACMS missiles to Kiev. While this has not been confirmed by the White House, it has been widely expected that the decision would be made. Various U.S. media, including the Washington Post cite “U.S. officials” and “several people familiar with the ongoing deliberations” for the news.
If true, this decision signals yet another escalation by the U.S. in their involvement in the war in Ukraine. ATACMS have a range of up to 190 miles and will give Ukraine the means of striking deeper into Russian territory. What’s worse, the munitions reportedly to be sent will be cluster-armed ATACMS, according to the Washington Post, which increase the destructive nature—and amount of deaths for years or decades to come. However, the decision to send the cluster-armed ATACMS was not made merely for strategic reasons, but rather because the U.S. military is running low on the standard missiles, yet has plenty of the outdated cluster-armed ones from the 1990s.
